I discovered ‘Zlata’s Diary‘ by Zlata Filipović recently and read it today.
Zlata is a eleven year old girl living in Sarajevo. It is the year 1991. It is a normal year. Zlata goes to school, plays with friends, celebrates birthdays, plays the piano, catches up with her grandparents who live nearby, goes on holiday trips with her family. She writes about all this in her diary. Then one day news arrives that there is war in a nearby town. And after that rumours spread. Then one day the rumours arrive that Sarajevo is going to be shelled on a particular day. People who believe in the rumours start leaving the city. Smart people, wise people like Zlata’s parents, are sad that people are believing in rumours and misinformation. Sarajevo is a peaceful city and they believe that things will continue to be peaceful there. Unfortunately, the rumour-believers turn out to be right. The shelling happens and all hell breaks loose. Zlata continues recording all these happenings in her diary, which she calls Mimmy. So everyday, she has a conversation with Mimmy. For nearly two years, we get a firsthand account of what happened in Sarajevo during those terrible, war-torn years, as we see the daily happenings, the small happy ones and the big sad ones through the eyes of a eleven year old (and later twelve year old and thirteen year old). Our heart goes out to Zlata, as she wonders why there is a meaningless war going on, and why grownups who are supposed to be making rational decisions and doing better, keep the fires of war and hate burning.
‘Zlata’s Diary‘ takes us into the everyday life of a Bosnian family, and then before we know it, we are transported into a war-torn zone, which is scary as we can almost hear the shells exploding in the front of our streets, and the fear and dread creeping into our hearts. It is a powerful book. I wouldn’t say I enjoyed reading it – it was scary and heartbreaking – but I am glad I read it.
I am sharing a couple of my favourite passages from the book below.
From the entry on Thursday, 19 November 1992
“I keep wanting to explain these stupid politics to myself, because it seems to me that politics caused this war, making it our everyday reality. War has crossed out the day and replaced it with horror, and now horrors are unfolding instead of days. It looks to me as though these politics mean Serbs, Croats and Muslims. But they are all people. They are all the same. They all look like people, there’s no difference. They all have arms, legs and heads, they walk and talk, but now there’s ‘something’ that wants to make them different. Among my girlfriends, among our friends, in our family, there are Serbs and Croats and Muslims. It’s a mixed group and I never knew who was a Serb, a Croat or a Muslim. Now politics has started meddling around. It has put an ‘S’ on Serbs, an ‘M’ on Muslims and a ‘C’ on Croats, it wants to separate them. And to do so it has chosen the worst, blackest pencil of all – the pencil of war which spells only misery and death. Why is politics making us unhappy, separating us, when we ourselves know who is good and who isn’t? We mix with the good, not with the bad. And among the good there are Serbs and Croats and Muslims, just as there are among the bad. I simply don’t understand it. Of course, I’m ‘young’, and politics are conducted by ‘grown-ups’. But I think we ‘young’ would do it better. We certainly wouldn’t have chosen war. The ‘kids’ really are playing, which is why us kids are not playing, we are living in fear, we are suffering, we are not enjoying the sun and flowers, we are not enjoying our childhood. WE ARE CRYING.”
From the entry on Monday, 15 March 1993
“And spring is around the corner. The second spring of the war. I know from the calendar, but I don’t see it. I can’t see it because I can’t feel it…There are no trees to blossom and no birds, because the war has destroyed them as well. There is no sound of birds twittering in springtime. There aren’t even any pigeons – the symbol of Sarajevo. No noisy children, no games. Even the children no longer seem like children. They’ve had their childhood taken away from them, and without that they can’t be children. It’s as if Sarajevo is slowly dying, disappearing. Life is disappearing. So how can I feel spring, when spring is something that awakens life, and here there is no life, here everything seems to have died.”
I read this for Women in Translation Month which is celebrated during the whole of August.
Have you read ‘Zlata’s Diary‘? What do you think about it?
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